The frost makes a flower, The dew makes a star,

Sylvia Plath, from “Death & Co.”, 14 November 1962, in: Ariel, 1965

“I am too pure for you or anyone.” ― Sylvia Plath, from “The Collected Poems” (1981)

via mstjohn813 on instagram

...

"I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes"

–Sylvia Plath, from the poem "Tulips", written 18 March 1961, in Ariel, 1965

...

TULIPS The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here. Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands. I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions. I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses And my history to the anaesthetist and my body to surgeons. They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut. Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in. The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble, They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps, Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another, So it is impossible to tell how many there are. My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently. They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep. Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage —- My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox, My husband and child smiling out of the family photo; Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks. I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat Stubbornly hanging on to my name and address. They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations. Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head. I am a nun now, I have never been so pure. I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free —- The peacefulness is so big it dazes you, And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets. It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet. The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me. Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby. Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds. They are subtle: they seem to float, though they weigh me down, Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their colour, A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck. Nobody watched me before, now I am watched. The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins, And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips, And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself. The vivid tulips eat my oxygen. Before they came the air was calm enough, Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss. Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise. Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine. They concentrate my attention, that was happy Playing and resting without committing itself. The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves. The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals; They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat, And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me. The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea, And comes from a country far away as health.

Nighttime poetry 🌃💭

Sylvia Plath's draft of "The Moon and the Yew Tree" from Ariel

Sylvia Plath, from “The Moon and the Yew Tree,” Ariel

If the moon smiled, she would resemble you. You leave the same impression of something beautiful, but annihilating.

Sylvia Plath, Ariel

Sylvia Plath in Paris, 1956

Sylvia Plath, Ariel; from ‘The Rival’

Sylvia Plath, Ariel

"We should meet in another life, we should meet in air, Me and you."

–Sylvia Plath, from “Lesbos”, 18 October 1962

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering Blue and mystical over the face of the stars.

Sylvia Plath, The Moon and the Yew Tree

Submitted by Iona Murphy

“The box is only temporary.” in Sylvia Plath’s handwriting

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The Arrival of the Bee Box

I ordered this, clean wood box Square as a chair and almost too heavy to lift. I would say it was the coffin of a midget Or a square baby Were there not such a din in it.

The box is locked, it is dangerous. I have to live with it overnight And I can’t keep away from it. There are no windows, so I can’t see what is in there. There is only a little grid, no exit.

I put my eye to the grid. It is dark, dark, With the swarmy feeling of African hands Minute and shrunk for export, Black on black, angrily clambering.

How can I let them out? It is the noise that appalls me most of all, The unintelligible syllables. It is like a Roman mob, Small, taken one by one, but my god, together!

I lay my ear to furious Latin. I am not a Caesar. I have simply ordered a box of maniacs. They can be sent back. They can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner.

I wonder how hungry they are. I wonder if they would forget me If I just undid the locks and stood back and turned into a tree. There is the laburnum, its blond colonnades, And the petticoats of the cherry.

They might ignore me immediately In my moon suit and funeral veil. I am no source of honey So why should they turn on me? Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free.

The box is only temporary.

—Sylvia Plath, written 4 October 1962, in: Ariel, 1965

On Restlessness and Emptiness

fernando pessoa, the book of disquiet // oh de laval, you live more for 5 minutes going fast on a bike than other people do in all of their life // mark ravenhill, beautiful thing // mine //  franz kafka, diaries 1910-1923 // simone de beauvoir, from diary of a philosophy student // kine andersen // ariel stess, i’m pretty fucked up // george condo, still life with skull and snowman // sylvia plath, the unabridged journals 

Hi. This is my monthly Sylvia Plath appreciation post.